JonathanK

10 years ago, I would dream of creating architectural visualizations that were extremely realistic. I always used Thea and Kerkythea with multiple softwares and importing models and creating textures, etc.. It would take a full night to let it run and in the morning, I'd get in and find that this wasn't quite right, or that wasn't quite right. It was a multi-day task to get one decent image. AI has brought that so much closer...and the more advanced it gets, the better the output. AND the quicker the turnaround. It's quite amazing.

Basically...if you upload a Chief render, and say "Make this more realistic", the AI will take all the stuff and enhance it slightly. But it will mostly just use all your textures, etc... But...if you upload a technical illustration and tell it what you want for materials, backgrounds, etc.. then it finds them and applies that to your illustration. The biggest challenge I ran into was that no matter what I did, it was always too clean and cartoony. The technical illustration shows the differences in the sidings, roofing, stone, etc.. so AI has context. You just need to tell it what you want...and it will fill in the gaps. Think rendering engine, not photo enhancer. It will do the photo enhancement, but if you feel like you're hitting a ceiling, that's the next step.

It's a prompt that I've fine tuned over the last few months. Nothing that anyone wouldn't be able to replicate on their own. It just has a lot of personal preferences and fine tuning/tweaking. But I use Gemini's AI. For the creative space, it's one of the better ones. Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, etc.. are all not great in the creative sense. They are excellent "companions" or "code writers". But I'm looking for a "rendering engine" more or less...and Gemini excels in that.

@Joe_Carrick, see attached. I just did a screen grab of yours, and ran it through my prompts. Not perfect...but better. Tried to get it to ignore textures, but alas...it just wants to use them no matter what.

This was done with the help of AI. Not perfect, but gets you close.

I have found if you want AI to enhance a picture, it takes your textures and basically just makes them looks somewhat "real". But the problem with that is that a lot of the textures in Chief are poorly tile-able. I would be curious if @Joe_Carrick took a Technical Illustration of the same angle on his cabin, and told AI what materials to use for roofing, siding, trims, background, etc... if it would generate a much more realistic looking render. The scene he posted has a lot of context, which AI needs. But it has too much for textures, etc.. so it basically just makes it look "meh" level realistic.

Touché, my friend!

Yeah...do that

You are most of the way there with what you have. Draw out the stile and rails mitered exactly how you want, and draw panels (with the top being glass). Convert them all to 3D solids, and adjust appropriately in 3D view. When that's done, in your 3D view, go to File>Export>Export 3D Model (3DS). Save the model where you want to that will be easily accessible. From there, go to File>Import>Import 3D Symbol, and locate the symbol you just saved. In the dialog box that pops up, name the symbol whatever you want, and under Category, select "Cabinet Door/Drawer". Make sure Add Symbol to Library is checked, as well as Show Advanced Options. In the Fixture Specification dialog box, the biggest thing here is to go to the 3D tab, rotate your symbol on the X Axis, and also go to the Advanced Sizing tab and set your stretch planes. Find the door in your library, and place them on your cabinets. Should work out good from there.

@Rich_Winsor, I thought you were going to post something like this for the recommendation on realistic people...

I've been strictly using Gemini. I've gone through a few prompts, but to me this is like handing out your Chief Architect template with all your settings ready to rip. I have found that if I treat Gemini as a rendering engine, I have far better results and far more realistic pictures. So I will upload a technical illustration of a drawing, and my prompt tells Gemini to ask me what to use for siding, stone, background, etc... The biggest hangup is driveways and parking lots. Even with specifying where they go, AI lacks context, so it gets a little weird at times.

I've been using Gemini with quite a bit of success...as long as you're ok with some wiggle room on staging, etc... I've dialed my prompt in and made it so that it will give me consistent results...within tolerance. It still gets a wild hair once in awhile...but it's all good. But it's the best at keeping the integrity of the picture, but enhancing the overall feel. I like it, anyways...

Castleview was Kathleen Moore, I think... We did a lot of work together with Kerkythea and Thea back when rendering was more difficult.

The reason I thought it signified manual newel posts is because on one trial run, when I switched it to manual...they changed to yellow. I think the CAD block for that newel post was generated by Chief. I can create a custom and see if it works better.

Did Cheryl die, or what?...or just retire?

The other strange thing is that all the walls on the left were drawn with right click method...so how come all four walls don't have the newels shown as yellow?

Hey @Renerabbitt. They dimension identically, but the the three railings on the left side are yellow. That signifies that you can manually adjust the newels. So if you click on the yellow box, and tab through, you can select it and move it. On the right side, that feature is not available. The interesting thing, is that if you open those railings, you can see that the newel spacing is set to Automatic. So then why are they showing up as yellow, if it's set to Automatic? It's probably not a huge deal...my workflow is that if I know I'm making multiple walls in succession, I use right click. If not, I use left click. So it's more of a little switch in my brain than any real issue.

Can anyone from CA confirm this, or am I making a big deal of something that's not a big deal?

And...maybe thinking on this a little further...if right click allows customization, how does that work for walls and other items?

Thanks, Joe. That's all good and well, but wondering why the top wall on the left doesn't have the "customization"? I always just assumed that right click was a continuous draw option, but apparently there is more to right click than I thought?...

I made a custom porch railing with a custom newel that is an 8x8 with the Simpson bracket and hardware. Anyways, I've noticed that when I draw the walls with this custom railing, and I use RIGHT click, it makes my newels "manual" spacing, even though it's all set to Automatic. When I draw the walls with this custom railing and I use LEFT click...it makes everything correct. Is this a bug, or is there a reason behind this? Railing Issue.zip Porch Railing.calibz

Another bummer, is when I want wood trim and "extension jamb", it makes my mull strip in the middle wood as well. That's pretty lame.

Am I missing something, or is there no way to call out extension jambs on windows? Also, I'm trying to build windows specific to how our manufacturer makes them (within reason of course), and the windows in general feel like they're missing a lot of adjustments that would make it model correctly. The biggest thing I notice is that we have adjustments for sash and frame, but if you look at how a casement window is actually built, there is overlap there that is not possible with how Chief models the window. Meaning on the exterior of a casement window you see more of the "sash" and less of the "frame". On the inside, it's the other way around. Is this a big deal?...no not really. But I want my cake and eat it too.

Does the hood have actual lighting assigned to it in some way? I would run the camera up under there and see if there's something with the actual symbol that has lighting associated with it.

I get that, but that's likely why it isn't working to build the attic truss. It's looking for a room w/ attic space on both sides and a flat ceiling. The pictures I posted above we're just a thing I whipped up quick with 3 stories. I think that's what you're looking for. You just make the "room" as big as you want the space for HVAC and call it good.